COEUR d'ALENE - Proposed legislation that would remove public kindergarten as an option for the majority of Idaho 5-year-olds has area school officials shaking their heads.

A bill introduced Tuesday in the Idaho Legislature's House Education Committee would eliminate two-thirds of the $50 million now appropriated in the annual budget for kindergarten, and leave $17 million to be used to prepare at-risk students to enter first grade.

Republican Rep. Steve Thayn, R-Emmett, introduced the plan, saying the state needs to decide what it's trying to accomplish with programs geared at Idaho's youngest students.

"The other two-thirds that might not attend kindergarten, what's going to happen to those kids?" said Pam Pratt, the Coeur d'Alene School District's director of elementary education and principal of the Hayden Kinder Center. "I see the gap in first grade widening between students who don't know letter naming fluency, sound naming fluency, blending and segmenting word sounds."

If the legislation is enacted, the Coeur d'Alene School District estimates it will lose funding for 447 kindergarten students, and 11 teaching positions.

The parents of those students will have to pay private schools, if they want their children to attend kindergarten.

The Coeur d'Alene district has 668 children enrolled in kindergarten this year, and receives $1.3 million to pay for the program.

Kindergarten teachers work on making sure all students have the pre-reading skills needed for first grade, Pratt said.

"Many of our kindergarteners leave as readers," Pratt said. "The older we go trying to catch them up, it gets harder and harder. We know we really need to get them to reading proficiency by second grade, after that it becomes very difficult."

By slashing funding for kindergarten, lawmakers estimate a savings of $30 million that could then be used to plug holes in the state education budget for grades one through 12.

"If you cut kindergarten, you are creating holes," Pratt said. "Instead of early intervention, you're going to pay for it later."

School districts now receiving money for 36 weeks of kindergarten would only get enough money for about 12 weeks, under the plan. They would be given more flexibility in how they spend the remaining and focus a majority of the time on at-risk students, not those who have already been prepared for the first grade by their parents.

Those kids would spend as little as three weeks in kindergarten and then stay at home, where parents could continue to work with them until they start the first grade, Thayn said.

"In this case, we might actually improve the education system by doing a little bit less," he said.

The plan to cut kindergarten comes just weeks after Idaho lawmakers adopted the Common Core Standards which includes about 90 skills kindergarten pupils are expected to master - including the ability to read grade level texts independently and be able to count to 100 - before moving on to first grade.

"In the long run, this type of cut would have negative impact on children for years," said Tom Taggart, the Lakeland School District's business director. "There are other solutions that do not gut essential programs."

Lakeland has 275 kindergarten students and seven teachers.

Post Falls currently has 410 students in kindergarten and 10 teachers for that level.

Julie Billetz, principal at Frederick Post Kindergarten in Post Falls, said she's "frightened and very surprised" over the proposal.

"They're talking about eliminating early intervention, so that doesn't sound good to me," she said. "It's important that kids get off on the right foot. When they leave kindergarten, they're reading."

Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane said he realizes there's a need to cut the budget, but kindergarten is an integral part of the education system.

"This would be a huge impact, and it would take me a while to get my brain around it," Keane said.

Keane said he's frustrated that proposals to cut education are being made in Boise without input from local districts.

"I understand that we need to look at ways to save money, but let's talk about the least way it would impact the public school system," he said. "But that doesn't seem to be the approach down there. The school districts haven't had much of an opportunity to weigh in on the options."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.